


with a glacier's patience

by taizi



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: M/M, Red String of Fate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 23:26:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17375189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taizi/pseuds/taizi
Summary: There's a red string tied to Natsume's finger. It's been there for as long as he can remember, but it's never led him anywhere.





	with a glacier's patience

Nishimura puts out his hand with a wide, reckless smile, and Natsume reaches to take it.

“Oh,” he says, pausing at the last second. 

“What?” Nishimura looks from Natsume’s face to his own palm. “What is it?”

“It’s nothing,” Natsume says and slides their hands together carefully. “I thought I saw a bug.”

The school day is over, and they’re waiting in the yard for a boy from another class. Nishimura is insistent that Natsume meet him, as though life simply can’t carry on until he does, and a longsuffering Tsuji told Natsume in confidence that it was only a matter of time.

“Those two sort of come as a package deal,” he said, and smiled helplessly when Natsume only looked confused. “Well – you’ll see what I mean.”

Beside him, Nishimura is waving someone over with his free hand, calling out with enthusiasm better matched to people reuniting after several years instead of a few hours, and a tall boy weaves through the thinning crowd to join them.

And the string between the two of them glints merrily in the afternoon sunlight, cherry red and infinitely precious.

“Oh,” Natsume says again, much softer this time. 

 

* * *

 

“But what is it, sensei?” he asks in the safety of his bedroom, staring down at his own hand. 

There’s a knotted string there, but it doesn’t look as pretty as Nishimura’s did. His string is frayed, a little off-color, as though it’s suffered through storms and hard winds.

“It’s rare is what it is,” Nyanko-sensei tells him plainly. “You don’t see ‘em very often, do you?”

“No, not at all. When I was a child I thought it may have been a trick the spirits were playing on me. I tried to get it off.”

Nyanko-sensei chokes on his bread pudding and looks at Natsume sharply, with real, hot anger – or something close to anger – glinting in his dark animal eyes.

“Little fool! You leave it be!” 

“No, I know,” Natsume says quickly. “It hurt when I tried to cut it, so I left it alone.” 

If anything that only seems to rile his guardian up further – Nyanko-sensei’s fur stands on end as he leaves his pudding cup on the floor and waddles over to claim a seat in Natsume’s lap. He’s bristling as he smacks a paw on Natsume’s wrist.

“The gods put this here for a reason,” he snaps. “It’s meant to lead you to a person you’re destined to meet. And you tried to cut it! Why are humans so intent on self-sabotage?”

The gods and destiny? Tying strings and writing fate for someone like him?

Natsume looks down at the ugly string on his finger with a frown – remembers a night a long time ago when he was very small and afraid to go home, dragging his feet even as twilight fell and the world became cold and dark. The people he was staying with then were loud and mean, and he had looked at the string on his hand and imagined, for the first time, that it might lead him somewhere better.

Somewhere nice and sunny, full of kind people and hands that didn’t hurt when they touched him – and maybe, in that nice, sunny place, there would be someone there for Natsume, too. Someone who smiled when they saw him.

It was just a child’s dream, built to be a comfort on lonely days, to cradle his heart and keep it from breaking – but now Natsume looks at the old, long-familiar string tied to his finger and wonders.

 

* * *

 

The chuukyuu are in the school yard, performing a dance in Natsume’s honor, and the boy by the window seems to be watching them. The red between them glints, like dust motes blinking in and out of the sun.

Natsume’s heart is in his throat. He holds his hand against his stomach, pressing it there as though afraid that the knot on his finger might come loose if he doesn’t hold it.

He thinks of the easy way Nishimura and Kitamoto belong together and manages to find courage enough to speak. 

“Do you see them?” His voice is hoarse and uncertain. “Those weird guys in the courtyard?”

Tanuma looks surprised, but only for a moment. Then he smiles, and his dark eyes are gentle as they fall away.

“Not really. For a moment I thought I saw a shadow there, though. I see strange things sometimes, and I heard a rumor that you did, too, so I wanted to meet you. But it’s probably just my imagination,” he says.

It’s an out where Natsume has never been given one before, a back door to this conversation that he can slip out and close behind him and never mention again, and all at once, just for that, Tanuma is one of the kindest people Natsume has ever met.

Natsume wants to know him. 

The thread gets shorter and shorter with every step he takes across the hall  until it’s only inches long, hanging unremarkably between his hand and Tanuma’s.

And despite everything – the knots and frays and faded color that tell of hard, lonely, painful years – Natsume doesn’t think it ugly anymore. 

**Author's Note:**

> i have waited  
> [with a glacier's patience](https://youtu.be/ebQoEpoyLeQ)


End file.
